1. Field of the Invention.
The present invention relates to bottle rinsers.
2. Prior Art.
Various types of bottle rinsers are well known in the prior art. In general, the function of such devices is to receive bottles, preferably in the upright position, turn the bottles over, spray water over the outside of the bottle and particularly upward into the open neck of the bottle to flush the entire bottle of any foreign matter which inadvertently previously found its way into the bottle, to drain the bottle and then reinvert the bottle to the upright position again. Such equipment is most generally used with glass bottles, though it is to be noted that the word "bottle" as used herein is not to be so limited, but rather the word "bottle" is used in the most general sense to include other types of containers such as by way of example, plastic bottles now also commonly used for the packaging of food and beverage products.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,104,081 discloses an inline bottle rinser having many features and advantages over other prior art bottle rinsers. By way of example, most prior art bottle rinsers somehow moved inverted bottles over stationary, upward directed spray heads, with the net result that only a small percentage of the upward directed spray actually proceeded into the bottle to rinse the inner portion thereof. While such equipment generally functions satisfactorily, it makes inefficient use of what must be particularly clean and clear water, an increasingly expensive commodity. Also many types of prior art rinsers invert the bottle for rinsing through a transport system which proceeds around a sprocket, with the net result that the direction of movement of the bottles reverses during rinsing. Here again while such equipment conceptually is satisfactory, the resulting equipment configuration is less than ideal and the resulting configuration frequently does not integrate well into conventional bottling plant layouts. Finally, one type of prior art bottle rinser guides a continuous stream of bottles through a first twisting section to invert the bottles for rinsing and then through a second twisting section to reinvert the bottles, the bottles being propelled by a driving force thereon at the infeed end of the guides. Such a system works with glass bottles, though obviously encourages some abrasion between bottles because of the driving force. However, such a system encounters great difficulty with the thin plastic bottles currently being used particularly in the soft drink industry, as the rotation of the bottles, one with respect to another, in the twisting regions inverting and reinverting the bottles, puts the bottles in a sidewall to sidewall contact position. In this position, the sidewalls tend to temporarily collapse so that the center lines of the bottles in the twisted regions move closer together than can be allowed in the subsequent straight guide section, frequently resulting in a jam in the system.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,104,081, an inline bottle rinser is disclosed which overcomes many of the foregoing problems. In that bottle rinser, a substantially linear transport system is provided with individual bottle carriers thereon, each pivotally supported on the transport system about an axis parallel to the direction of motion of the transport system. The rinser includes an infeed worm system to receive bottles from an infeed conveyor and load them individually in the carriers. Thereafter the bottles are each supported and transported by the carriers, the carriers themselves and thus the bottles therein being rotated 180 degrees to invert the bottles prior to passage into the rinse section and to thereafter rotate the carriers and thus the bottles back to the original position. Because of the carrier arrangement the rinser would also be usable with the thin walled plastic bottles hereinbefore referred to. In addition, the rinser features rotating spray head assemblies so that the spray is purposely directed up the neck of the open bottle through a changing angle so as to positively rinse the bottles with minimum use of water. The system of that patent however, is configured for a specific size bottle and does not include any changeover capability to allow a rinser set up for one size bottle to be converted to handle a second size bottle. Accordingly, it is a purpose of the present invention to maintain the advantageous characteristics of the inline bottle rinser of U.S. Pat. No. 4,104,081, but to do so in a manner which will allow a quick changeover capability whereby a rinser of one basic configuration can be manufactured and sold for use by different bottlers using different size bottles, and a rinser configured to handle bottles of one size may be readily changed over to bottles of substantially any other size.